On my latest trip to Hiroshima, I decided to make the trek to the Yokogawa area and try Pizza Riva. I found Pizza Riva on the Associazione Verace Pizza napoletanawebsite, but one friend who lives in Hiroshima had already told me it was his favorite.

Motsunabe is a Fukuoka speciality, if you have never heard of it, it’s a simple hot pot dish of offals cooked in a soy sauce based soup with plenty of garlic and garlic chive. Motsunabe restaurants are legion in Fukuoka, but this time, we went to a smaller and less touristy place.

We got to Matsuura at 10h30, a full 30 min before opening time and we were shocked to see people already waiting. The restaurant looks like a private house lost in the parking lot of a drab factory, but yeah, appearance is often misleading.

In Japan, if you live right next to the Inland Sea, well, you eat Inland Sea fishes. It was only natural, after crossing the whole width of Japan to visit Tottori, that we stopped at the local fish market to eat the stuff fished in the Sea of Japan.

When I left Moriyama after lunch for a long bike ride by the shore of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture, my goal was to get to Nagahama city early enough to secure a table at Marusa, a popular yakiniku restaurant. All I can say, the reward was worth the super windy 70 km bike ride.

Hiroshima is famous for okonomiyaki and in the town of okonomiyaki, Mitchan is my restaurant of choice. I’ve been to Mitchan at least twice a year for the last 3 years and they have been serving great food every time.

Wake Pizza King looks like a big city restaurant that would have gotten lost in the countryside of Okayama Prefecture. Pizza King is proving once again that great food can be found in odds places in Japan.

Chez Papa French restaurant can be found on the outskirt of the “cool Soho like” neighborhood in Okayama city. From the outside, it looks like hundred of other restaurants, makes you wonder if there is only one sign maker in Japan. In my mind, Chez Papa is an amazing restaurant in Paris which serves amazing South-West food, will this Japanese iteration let me down?